


The tempest in her teacup.

by orphan_account



Series: Fullmetal Femslash February 2014 [21]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: 50 Sentences, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Chess Metaphors, F/F, Femslash, Femslash Challenge 2014, Femslash February, Politics, Xing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-13 06:52:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1216735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I am the Empress,” she says, for once disregarding the royal <em>we</em> and the pronouns of grace, not because she dares to seem vulnerable in front of another sovereign, but because the treaty must be written. “You who are of equal rank may refer to me as Empress Chang.”</p><p>The Chieftess neither prostrates herself seven time before the Empress as tradition dictates nor bows sharply at the waist with her hands clasped in the respectful gestures of the huntsmen. “I am the Fa people,” she responds with eyebrows arched and pointed ever so slightly, “and as I am they, you may call me as they do: Lan Fan.”</p><p>Or, in which Lan Fan and May are opposing queens of opposing factions, which doesn't stop the unbidden falling in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The tempest in her teacup.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Femslash February. Prompt O3 on my bingo card, "Royalty". Also written for the "50 Themes" challenge, with an average of two sentences per theme.
> 
> Although it doesn't really come up in the fic proper simply because of the themes I selected, since I know the assumptions, May is demisexual and Lan Fan is a transwoman per my headcanons. But really you can interpret the both of them however you want or need to. Just thought that it might clarify anything that I put in and forgot about, heheh.
> 
> Unedited/unbeta'd/etc. Read at your own risk. Enjoy, and thank you for reading!

_I. Motion_

The huntsmen of the southern mountains known as the Dragon’s Spine have clashed with the civilisation of Xing for generations untold. The Emperor regards them as barbarians, their caricatured likenesses painted onto opera masques and brought forth for the people of Xing to snicker endlessly in the crowd, as if the huntsmen’s existence is nothing more than the greatest joke the Heavens, the Xingese Heavens, could have played.

_II. Cool_

When the Emperor expands his forces towards the foothills of the huntsmen’s territory, the Imperial forces meet arrows of flame and blades of steel. Xingese merchants make bets on whether the heathens will last one month or two until the Emperor awakens with a huntsman’s kunai pierced deep through his sternum to the centre point of his _chi_.

_III. Young_

The new Emperor imposes a flood of reforms that nearly tear apart the land in civil war; he flees his people, promising to return, and an Empress ascends amidst an empire in tatters. The huntsmen camp in the gentle moist grasslands of the southern territories of Xing.

_IV. Last_

By the turn of the lunar new year amid the swollen rivers of spring, the last of the insurgents are crushed in  the mountains. Watching a world unseen behind the fireworks of a pyrrhic victory, the Empress seats herself at her desk and begins a letter, because another war would destroy Xing, and her people with it.

_V. Wrong_

On the front lines of the conflict, the Chieftess of the huntsmen charges into the port city of Nanhai and within hours the streets glow in flames. Observing the burning carcass of the once bustling trading harbour amid the chorus of screams and swords, the Chieftess unfurls the messenger hawk’s scroll and reads.

_VI. Gentle_

The Chieftess handles her stallion with a gossamer touch that leaves the Empress breathless simply to drink in; she collects the vision in a bottle, corks it to keep it safe until the winter nights. Bowing deeply, the Empress of Xing welcomes her mortal enemy to her hearth, and to her heart.

_VII. One_

“I am the Empress,” she says, for once disregarding the royal _we_ and the pronouns of grace, not because she dares to seem vulnerable in front of another sovereign, but because the treaty must be written. “You who are of equal rank may refer to me as Empress Chang.”

_VIII. Thousand_

The Chieftess neither prostrates herself seven time before the Empress as tradition dictates nor bows sharply at the waist with her hands clasped in the respectful gestures of the huntsmen. “I am the Fa people,” she responds with eyebrows arched and pointed ever so slightly, “and as I am they, you may call me as they do: Lan Fan.”

_IX. King_

“And I will call you as they do: May.”

In this delicate game of _xiangqi_ the Chieftess is the soldier who, crossing the river, learns to slip sideways to evade the Empress’s carefully marshalled forces and edge ever closer to the king.

_X. Learn_

Her braids twine and knot at the base of her skull, each colour of ribbon nestled in the tips a marker of another form of alkahestry learned and understood and mastered. Kneeling before the pond of goldfish in her private garden, she unwinds the hues from her hair to select which braid might help her master the Chieftess.

_XI. Blur_

The meetings pass one by one as the terms of the treaty emerge from the fog. The Empress keeps her tongue leashed tightly to her words, because a single intonation could devour her people over again in desolation and death.

_XII. Wait_

Fireworks blaze fire across the heavens and temples crowd with offerings and prayers to a year of peace and prosperity; in the Pulse the Empress feels her people rejoice with the lunar new year. The Chieftess’s wide pupils reflect the million swirling hues: Her outstretched hands catch stardust in her palms.

_XIII. Change_

After a meeting concerning borderline between Xing and the territory of the huntsmen, of the Fa people, May retires to her chambers to reflect upon her curiously strained-relaxed relationship with Lan Fan. Xiao-Mei nibbles bamboo shoots while May wonders when she stopped referring to her as the Chieftess and started thinking of her as Lan Fan.

_XIV. Command_

When May insists upon the Fa swearing fealty to Xing against outside threats but not against internal, Lan Fan embeds the blunt blade of a kunai onto the table. A returning hunting party of Huo reports her grey stallion, and the next morning Lan Fan enters the diplomacy chambers wearing the sewn pelt of a stag from the Imperial grounds.

_XV. Hold_

“More of your people will suffer for your inability to _compromise_ , Lan Fan.”

“My people will not become entangled in the affairs of a country as avaricious as Xing, May.”

_XVI. Need_

The white gelding follows behind the dark warhorse of the Fa, the peaceful clouds after the maelstrom, the yang to her yin; At May’s request, Lan Fan teaches her how to handle the reins, how to gently squeeze a horse’s flank, how to direct a horse with the knowledge that the herbivorous beasts run away from danger rather than towards it. May observes the huntswoman and wonders why _she_ is leaping headfirst.

_XVII. Vision_

Two attendants on Lan Fan’s either side. Her grandfather, the first, wrinkled and patient and robed in black; an unknown, the second, young and handsome and adorned with a yellow sash.

_XVIII. Attention_

The boy with the yellow sash moves and leaps and _speaks_ as if he were a spirit about to transform into a bird and take flight, as if he laughed at gravity and slept amongst the stars. She knows him, knows his motions, knows his name: Ling.

_XIX. Soul_

Every dawn, when the Fa leave for their no longer surreptitiously secret hunt, the chambers of the Chieftess of the Fa offer no guards, no sentries, no one in the Pulse but for a single soul. Rapping on the wooden post by the entrance, May struggles to calm the _chi_ writhing inside her chest.

_XX. Picture_

“If I may be so bold as to ask, Lan Fan, but . . . who are they, the people in the portrait?”

“They were my mother and father, may they rest in peace, and no matter how the seasons change, I will never hunt with them again.”

_XXI. Fool_

“What are you crying for?”

“Because when my father died, when my brother disappeared, when my mother was assassinated and I ascended the throne to a people breaking itself apart, I could not cry no matter how desperately I need to. Because you won’t, I can already _tell_ you won’t, and someone has to cry for you, don’t you think?”

_XXII. Mad_

Five separate kunai line the wall like an alkahestry array ripped apart, unwound whole, and hung upon a spike for all to see. Yet against the frightening thunderclouds of Lan Fan’s fury, May can see the tears glimmering unbidden at the corners of her eyes.

_XXIII. Child_

When the storm passes the queens kneel quietly beside one another, the warm embrace of shared grief and pain and understanding reminding them that both are far too young to rule. That their childhoods were folded up and hidden in the wardrobe while the world fit them in silken robes large and loose enough to swallow their trembling frames.

_XXIV. Now_

In the circle of Lan Fan’s arms May makes an unexpected discovery.

Separate hearts can merge into one thrum, one beat, one Pulse.

_XXV. Shadow_

The Fa people of the Dragon’s Spine swear their fealty to Xing in the event that an enemy force attacks Xijing directly; in return the Empire of Xing agrees to render all further invasions of the Dragon’s Spine unholy, to accept the Fa as a family of Xing whilst they retain their blessed autonomy. Although May cannot Lan Fan’s face, hidden behind the traditional masque of the Fa, she can read the smile in the tilt of Lan Fan’s chin.

_XXVI. Goodbye_

As the horse-woven banners of the Fa spread their grey and white across the sky, rippling like the mane of a cantering stallion, the Chieftess and the Empress bow to one another in the respectful manner befitting their personas in the outside world. For a moment May’s loose sleeve catches Lan Fan’s hand, or else Lan Fan slips her hand deftly within, but the warmth of the briefest contact sparks a bridge of magpies of silent promises between their eyes.

_XXVII. Hide_

She finds her vanished brother seated cross-legged upon her bed. “So,” says Ling, the Bird’s Flight Emperor, “ _you’re_ the girl Lan Fan hasn’t shut up about; how’s Xing been doing without me?”

_XXVIII. Fortune_

She introduces him as Ping and he teaches her Lan Fan’s secrets. In the midst of the night she furls a letter, caps the scroll in a tube of glass, and lifts the window’s drapes to allow the messenger hawk access to the silver lights overhead.

_XXIX. Safe_

By the end of the southern rice harvest, May cannot sleep for worry, and so the Empress sends an official envoy who returns to kneel at her feet for fear of death. “Your Imperial Majesty, this one learned that the Chieftess of the Fa, praised be her name, fought in a border dispute with the Ronshitese, and has lost an arm.”

_XXX. Ghost_

Lan Fan cannot die.

_XXXI. Hue_

“She won’t leave her people, May, not even for this.”

“Then Xing is yours to command until I return. If so much as a single yuan is out of place, Ling, I shall have your head on an amaranth platter.”

“The colour of the Yao is gold, though.”

“The colour of the Empress is pink.”

_XXXII. Eye_

May unwinds the ribbons in her hair and coils them one by one around the thin blades that serve as her alkahestry points. Curling the fingers of her remaining hand, Lan Fan grips May’s wrist with an intensity that shoots pain through the bone of May’s arm, her irises darkened in the physical manifestation of the agony threatening to crack open May’s sternum and crush her heart beneath its icy square-shaped palm.

_XXXIII. Never_

“You abandoned your people to save _me_ , May; has no one taught you not to get involved in another nation’s affairs?”

“Ah, but the Fa people _are_ Xing’s affair, Lan Fan; has no one taught you that a woman will never reveal herself but to the one individual whom she loves most in the entire world?”

_XXXIV. Sing_

The craftsmen of the Fa measure the dimensions and weight of her remaining arm, whiling away the time with a Fa folk tune in a dialect May cannot understand. Yet when Lan Fan joins their voices in the repeated chorus, raising an eyebrow in May’s direction, she finds the shape of the words comfortable cradled on her tongue.

_XXXV. Sudden_

The words, two and then ten: “Lan Fan. I think I might be falling in love with you.”

_XXXVI. Stop_

As the chambers fall to a deadened silence, Lan Fan, Fu, and the craftsmen eye one another for the longest period of time, while May shrinks further and further inwards to her robes and Xiao-Mei laps urgently at her ear. Then Lan Fan’s stallion, whinnying, pokes his head and neck through the round window, and the universe shatters into a thousand beads of laughter, into a thousand shimmers of stars.

_XXXVII. Time_

The craftsmen say three years; Fu says one.

Lan Fan says six months and by the end she’s vomited more blood than could possibly have existed in her body, not that May could be more proud.

_XXXVII. Wash_

Scrubbing the blood from Lan Fan’s linen proves a surprisingly rote task that gives her a motivation to stay by the injured woman’s side. And when Lan Fan scrunches inwards on herself in agony yet refuses the dewdrops that moisten the whites of her eyes, shiny-wet, May can scrunch inwards with her with wetness streaking trails of salt down her cheeks.

_XXXIX. Torn_

The ambassadors from Ronshito arrive to discuss the border dispute after May emends the treaty to force the Fa to _inform_ Xing of such issues beforehand. Flexing the steel fingers of her automail arm, Lan Fan tilts her head back onto May’s stomach: “I cannot abandon my people, May, as you cannot abandon yours.”

_XL. History_

Upon her return to Xijing, May manages to resolve three issues in as many sleepless days and nights with only Xiao-Mei’s fuzz-warmth for company: Ling points out any changes made whatsoever while on the throne, reverting any that narrow May’s eyes; Ronshito hurriedly agrees to pay back Xing for her damages in return for a promise to increase trade for the nations; and May discovers that the official laws of Xing do not technically forbid marriage between two women.

Xiao-Mei steadies her hand as she furls up the letter for the messenger hawk.

_XLI. Power_

Kneeling before the Chieftess, the Empress offers half of her kingdom and half of her life; the Chieftess counters with an offer of eighty-five percent.

The ancient gods rise from the mountains and from the seas to cleave the universe asunder and all of the power in the world would remain in their palms framed by the unbreakable chains of their intertwined fingers, intertwined promises, intertwined lives.

_XLII. Bother_

“Y-your Imperial Majesty, forgive this one his rude observations, but will not Xing grow uneasy at such a . . . development?”

“Tell me, who sits upon the throne, who has lead Xing to peace and prosperity, who has met the love of her life and will accept no other?”

_XLIII. God_

The day before the wedding, May guides Lan Fan to a modest shrine offset from her ancestral temple, grey and white and adorned with the galloping beasts of the wind. The day of the wedding, Lan Fan guides May to the greatest happiness offset from her bright-eyed bright-mouthed euphoria, pink and white and adorned with a passionate kiss before the crowd, before Xing, before God.

_XLIV. Wall_

Tomorrow May and Lan Fan will,  concealing the trepidation palpable in their quivering fingertips slit open the newspaper as the printed pages fall softly upon over their knees, a bird taking flight of their fear. Tomorrow May and Lan Fan will read nothing but glowing pride of Xing in her beloved Empress, nothing but fierce joy in her new Chieftess, nothing but an almost universal acceptance against the impassable wall of tradition that the women, hugging one another and no concealing the stardust glittering in their irises, have conquered, for _all_ women, at last.

_XLV. Naked_

Tonight May and Lan Fan unwrap the other layer by layer from diaphanous silk and taut leather. Tonight May lowers her eyelids and presses her hot face into her lover’s bare shoulder; tonight Lan Fan cradles the form of her lover with her flesh hand, with an exceeding birds’ wing gentleness, with her gossamer touch, and they discover her automail is just as warm.

_XLVI. Drive_

Lan Fan lives for the Fa, and for May; May, for Xing, and for Lan Fan.

_XLVII. Harm_

If one were to pass to the Heavens above, fingers scrabbling at the sword carving through her chest or at the poison bubbling in her throat, the other would take her blade of melee or magic, smite the world where it stood, and move on to live the happiness he other would have desired her to attain.

_XLVIII. Precious_

Ling surprises them the following morning with a massive cake of spun sugar and fermented fruit, emblazoned every hue imaginable and highlighted in pink and gold, the characters iced into the rainbow expanse spelling out: _Congratulations on the sex_. May snags Lan Fan’s wrist before the huntswoman can lodge a kunai into the centre of her advisor’s forehead.

_XLIX. Hunger_

Regardless of the increased communication between Xing and the Fa, Lan Fan returns to her people frequently, partially for her duty and partially for the irrepressible smile the Dragon’s Spine evokes even silhouetted against the sapphire sky, a smile that sings over May’s heartstrings to see. With Xiao-Mei and Ling by her side, May awaits her lover’s return in tax adjustments and international diplomacy.

_L. Believe_

“Mm, Lan Fan? Guess what? Do you know what I’m allowed to say now?”

“I love you?”

“ _I love you too_ , you mind-reader.”

“Heart-reader. _Chi_ -reader. Ah, and for how long I’ve known you, known all of you, May-reader as well.”


End file.
